As the Edmonton Oil Kings prepare to host Game 5 of the Western Hockey League playoffs tonight, I wonder how many folks in the reading audience can recollect the last time this happened, 40 years ago this spring.

I know I do. In fact that Oil Kings squad of 1971-72 occupies a singular place in my heart, as the “bridge” team between my own arrival in Edmonton in 1971 and the arrival of professional hockey just a year later. So if you care to join me, let’s go for a little ramble down memory lane.

I was a teenager myself when my family came to Edmonton to stay just before that 1971-72 school year. The Cold War was still in deep freeze mode, professional and international hockey resided in separate worlds, and the provincial Tories were just coming off a big election win (hey, some things never change). Separated from my beloved St. John’s Memorial Stadium where I used to take in live Newfoundland Amateur Hockey Association action as well as plenty of high school puck, I had to cast my eye about the big new city to fill my hockey fix. The Edmonton Flyers were a memory while the Oilers were still a gleam in Bill Hunter’s eye. To a high school student the UAlberta Golden Bears were still a few years in my future, but the Edmonton Oil Kings were just right.

Some of the oldest mementos from the author’s ticket stub collection date back to WCHL games at the Edmonton Gardens from that 1971-72 season. Note the ticket prices, and the inflationary cost of playoff games even then. I’m pretty sure “Event 11″ was the clinching game against Regina Pats, and proves among other things that I hadn’t yet learned to hold on to the long end of the ticket.

That already-famous club played out of the old Edmonton Gardens, a small problem in that it wasn’t very accessible from my home in the southwest part of town. Nonetheless, I soon made a close friend in high school who had both a taste for hockey and a car. Before long the trek across town to take in an Oil Kings game became a regular thing. By the time the playoffs got underway that spring of ’72 we were hooked, not to mention wise in the ways of knowing what seats in the old barn — which was held upright by any number of pillars and rafters — offered unobstructed views of both nets!

That was two iterations ago of the Oil Kings brand. The WCHL was so young they hadn’t yet excised the “Canada” from the league name, as all twelve franchises of the day played under the Canadian flag. There were three teams in each of the four western provinces, placing Edmonton squarely in the western conference.

Since then the league has shifted south and west. Starting with the Oil Kings themselves, who within five years would be the first team to head stateside to become, ironically enough, the Portland Winterhawks.

That didn’t seem a possible future that winter of ’71/72. Other than occasional news articles featuring Gary Davidson, Bill Hunter, Ben Hatskin and their big talk about the World Hockey Association becoming a professional league to rival the NHL, there wasn’t a hint of the downturn in the fortunes of junior hockey which would accompany the arrival of the pros. The Oil Kings were still the biggest game in town.

The old WCHL was a pretty dynamic league that 1971-72 season. The top ten scoring leaders were studded with names like Tom Lysiak, Lanny McDonald and Blaine Stoughton, future NHL stars all, not to mention Stan Weir, Dennis Sobchuk, and Ron Chipperfield, future Edmonton Oilers all. Jimmy Watson was the league’s top defenceman. John Davidson, still a big name in this game all these years later, was not just its dominant goalie but its best player period.

None of those names played for the Edmonton Oil Kings, who were merely good enough to successfully defend their league championship that spring of ’72, taking down the New Westminster Bruins, Calgary Centennials, and Regina Pats in consecutive best-of-eight playoff series (yeah, you read that right).

That was a heckuva team. It featured no fewer than seven players who would be drafted in the first two rounds of the NHL Amateur Draft in that or subsequent springs, who collectively played over 3200 games in the NHL and hundreds more in the WHA. Draft age was 20 back then, meaning none of those players actually got drafted until after their junior career was over. So we didn’t know where these guys would be going, just that they’d be going.

– Tom Bladon was the Mark Pysyk of his day, a local product who was a right-shooting, puck-moving defenceman wearing both Pysyk’s #3 and the captain’s C. In those days, of course, most of the players were local products, as the WHL’s bantam draft hadn’t begun to blend talent across the prairies, and Bladon’s emergence from Maple Leaf Athletic Club was a fairly typical story. Bladon was a flashy player who grabbed my eye right off the hop for his ability to jump up into the play and willingness to throw down with anybody. He was drafted later that spring by Philadelphia Flyers (23rd overall, just like Mark Pysyk!), and within three years had won two Stanley Cups. He later set still-extant NHL records for points by a defenceman in a game (4-4-8, later tied by Edmonton Oiler Paul Coffey) and for recording a +10 in that same contest, still the best single game on record. Bladon would ultimately become the only Oil King from that team to play a game (exactly one!) with the NHL Oilers, although a couple of his teammates would play with the WHA version.

— Phil Russell was another strapping defence prospect developed, and developing, right here in Edmonton. Russell put up 59 points to complement Bladon’s 55 as the Oil Kings rode the two all-situation horses for all they were worth. Russell had some rougher edges which can easily be seen in his startling 331 penalty minutes, and was deemed the better prospect of the two, being selected in the first round, 13th overall, by Chicago Blackhawks that spring. The rugged rearguard went on to an outstanding NHL career, playing over 1000 games and recording over 2000 penalty minutes along with over 400 points. He played in the Stanley Cup Finals his rookie season, but never made it back in his decade and a half in the bigs.

– Darcy Rota was a prolific scorer in the middle season of a three-year WCHL career which saw him score 167 goals and 316 points in 199 games as an Oil King. Still a year away from the draft where Chicago made him a first-rounder to follow Russell, Rota lit the lamp 51 times that season and co-led the Oil Kings with 105 points. He went on to an excellent NHL career as a consistent 20-goal man with the Hawks and later the Canucks, scoring 256 big league goals over the course of 11 seasons. He was one of the most accomplished players I’ve ever seen at deflections and a master at collecting garbage around the crease generally.

– Don Kozak was a hard-shooting winger who tied Rota for the team lead with 105 points, including 55 goals. Kozak would also get picked high that spring (20th overall by the L.A. Kings), the squad with whom he would play the lion’s shared of his 437-game career which had a promising start before coming off the rails somewhat. Kozak still holds the NHL record he set in 1977 for the fastest goal from the start of a playoff game: 6 seconds. Check out those old Kings unis, yellow pants and all, not to mention the ’70s big hair in this hockey card from the era.

— Goalies Doug Soetaert and Larry Hendrick were just 15 and 16 respectively that season, my closest contemporaries on the team as their birthdates straddled my own. Given their tender ages they were surprisingly good, although it’s interesting to note that between them they had 83 appearances in a 68-game schedule, suggesting coach Brian Shaw was not shy about using the hook. While Hendrick flamed out as a pro Soetaert went on to a solid NHL career of nearly 300 GP, gradually working his way from part-timer to backup to #1A goaltender in an era the job was shared far more equally than is common nowadays.

Other contributors included forwards Brian Ogilvie and John Rogers, two more second round picks who got their shot at the bigs. Rogers would go on to play with the WHA Oilers, as would defender Dave Inkpen. Towering Keith Mackie was starting to emerge as a shutdown defender, but all too soon would lose his promising career to a catastrophic eye injury. Fred Comrie was brother of Bill, soon-to-be-uncle of future Oilers Paul and Mike, and a pretty darn good hockey player in his own right.

It was a heckuva team, not quite good enough to complete the regular season/playoff “double” that the ’70-71 team had, but good enough to take down the mighty Calgary Centennials in an epic six-game series to pave their way to the finals. That Calgary team featured future NHL stars like Bob Nystrom, Danny Gare, Mike Rogers and Jimmy Watson, but their star was the fabulous John Davidson, who remains the best junior goaltender I’ve ever seen. The Centennials led the league in goals-against by a ridiculous 56, in large part due to the consistently brilliant netminding of league MVP Davidson. I saw no fewer than five U-20 versions of the Battle of Alberta that season, and was blown away by Davidson’s presence and poise each time. Still, the Oil Kings managed to overcome the regular season champions in a bitterly-fought series featuring lots of extra hype from born promoters Bill Hunter and Scotty Munro. Edmonton Gardens was packed out and with good reason. Lousy sightlines notwithstanding, it was a fun place to watch a game, especially when the Oil Kings were taking out a hated rival.

Once the dragon (or dinosaur, or whatever) from Calgary had been slain, the Oil Kings took on the eastern conference champion Regina Pats, featuring Clark Gillies and Dennis Sobchuk in starring roles. The standings suggested the series should be close (Edmonton claimed home ice advantage by a mere two points) but the Oil Kings’ depth and experience proved too much and they wrapped up the President’s Cup in Game 5 — pretty much the exact counterpart of tonight’s game, 40 years ago.

Except this time around there’ll be no cup (now the Ed Chynoweth Cup), not tonight at least. This battle between Oil Kings franchises new and old seems to be set to go the distance.

That time the victorious Oil Kings went on to the Memorial Cup, then a three-team tournament (in fact the first of that type). Under the rules of the day they were allowed to add one player from another team in their league; despite the obvious choice of Davidson the revised line-up never quite gelled, thus the team is remembered as “just” WCHL champions.

This time? Well, it’s pretty hard to ramble on about the future. I guess that’s why they play the games … and why we watch them.

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